Discovery (Daft Punk)
Discovery is the second studio album by French electronic music duo Daft Punk, released on 26 February 2001 by Virgin Records. It marks a shift from the Chicago house sound prevalent on their first studio record, Homework (1997), to a house style more heavily inspired by disco, post-disco, garage house, and R&B. Comparing their stylistic approach to their previous album, band member Thomas Bangalter described Discovery as an exploration of song structures and musical forms whereas Homework was "raw" electronic music. He also described Discovery as a reflection of the duo's childhood memories, when they listened to music with a more playful and innocent viewpoint. The album was recorded at Bangalter's home in Paris between 1998 and 2000. The album features extensive sampling; few samples were from older records, while others were recorded by Daft Punk playing live instruments themselves. Fellow electronic musicians Romanthony, Todd Edwards, and DJ Sneak collaborated on some tracks both musically and lyrically. For the album's music videos, the group developed a concept involving the merging of science fiction with the entertainment industry. Inspired by their childhood love for Japanese anime, the duo collaborated with Leiji Matsumoto to produce Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem, an anime film with the entirety of Discovery as the soundtrack. The film features no dialogue, with few sound effects. In the lead-up to Discovery's release, the duo adopted robot costumes, claiming they had become robots as a result of an accident in their studio. They also launched Daft Club, a website which featured exclusive tracks and other bonus material. Discovery was a critical and commercial success, peaking high across several charts internationally on release. Critics praised Daft Punk for innovating the house music scene in the same manner they had done with Homework. The album spawned six singles; "One More Time" featuring Romanthony was its most successful, and became a club hit. This album was released on the 26th February 2001. Many people have said it was a great album, and some even said it inspired them to create the own music (Madeon). Madeon has sampled various songs from this album to create his own mashup, ”Pop Culture” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTx3G6h2xyA). The most popular track on this great album is One More Time. Daft Punk have denied the fact for years that they sampled for One More Time, but people have been slicing bits from Eddie Johns’ song More Spell On You, and have created nearly a perfect remake. Daft Punk then said they sampled for it. Recording Discovery was recorded in the duo's own studio, Daft House, located at Bangalter's home in Paris, France. Daft Punk started work on the album in early 1998, and produced it over the course of two years. Bangalter and Homem-Christo made music together and separately, in a similar process to their debut album Homework. Although they used the same equipment as they had for Homework, the duo sought to record tracks that were more concise than their previous work. For Discovery, the group used different samplers and synthesizers, including Akai MPC, E-mu SP-1200, Oberheim DMX and LinnDrum. The track "Short Circuit", which features a Sequential Circuits drum pattern,1 was previously heard in Daft Punk's 1997 live sets. For vocoders, the group used a Roland SVC-350, and a DigiTech Vocalist. Production on the album also incorporated a PC with Auto-Tune and an early version of Logic. Every track on Discovery uses a different phase shifter. The album was mastered by Nilesh Patel, who also had mastered Homework. One of the first tracks to come out of the Discovery sessions, "One More Time", was completed in 1998 and was left "sitting on a shelf" until its single release in 2000. After completing "Too Long" early in the album's production, Daft Punk decided that they "didn't want to do 14 more house tracks" in the way the genre is usually defined, and thus set out to incorporate a variety of styles for the record.The album features musical contributions from Romanthony, Todd Edwards, and DJ Sneak. Romanthony and Edwards were some of the producers that had the most influence on Daft Punk. The duo had wanted to work with them on Homework, but found it difficult to convince them to do so since they were still relatively unknown. DJ Sneak wrote the lyrics to "Digital Love" and assisted in the song's production. Samples A significant amount of sampling is present on the album. Rather than creating new music using only the samples, Daft Punk worked with them by writing and performing additional parts. The Discovery liner notes specify permitted use of samples for four tracks on the album: Part of George Duke's "I Love You More" is featured in "Digital Love"; Edwin Birdsong's "Cola Bottle Baby" was sampled for "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger"; The Imperials' song "Can You Imagine" is used for "Crescendolls"; Barry Manilow's "Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed" is credited for "Superheroes".3 It is believed that "One More Time" contains a sample of Eddie Johns’ song "More Spell on You", which was reported to be officially cleared28 despite it being uncredited in the Discovery liner notes. Several websites list many other samples present on the album, but Bangalter has stated that half of the samples he had seen listed are not true. He also stated the sampling they do is legitimately done, not something they try to hide.29 Bangalter elaborated that the newly recorded elements were implemented in a way that was equivalent to "creating fake samples“ where people think there are samples from disco records or funk records. Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo estimated that half of the sampled material on Discovery was played live and re-recorded by the duo.